Shamima Begum has lost the first stage of her appeal against the Home Office’s decision to revoke her citizenship
A judgment by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission has ruled against Begum on three preliminary grounds, including that she had not been improperly deprived of her citizenship. Begum was born in the UK and grew up in east London. The court heard there was no evidence she had ever visited Bangladesh – her parents’ country of origin – or applied for citizenship there.
Begum’s lawyers have argued that she has been left stateless, unable to mount a fair and effective legal challenge and is at risk of death, inhuman or degrading treatment. It is feared that if she is forced to go to Bangladesh she could be hanged.
Begum left the UK in 2015 as a teenager and fled to Syria with two other friends to join the Islamic State. She resurfaced in February 2019 in a Syrian refugee camp nine months pregnant asking to return home. The then home secretary, Sajid Javid refused to permit her repatriation and stripped her of her British citizenship a few weeks later effectively consigning her to a life outside of the UK.
The decision of the justices in this preliminary appeal does not prevent Begum from continuing with her substantive one, but it prevents her from returning to the UK in the interim.
